Help us reject Psychiatry one show at a time.

Hello. That's me, having a nice laugh.

If you are here, you may have seen my show - thanks so much - fyi unfortunately this is not the place to come for refunds. If you have come for a refund after watching That's Not My Name, then the joke's on you because I am asking you for more money.

You see, The Arts Council rejected our funding application to extend our tour and development of lived experience workshops challenging modern psychiatry & psychology's language and utility regarding our mental state and experiences.

So yeah, no money, no show. It is all a bit sad.

(If you have not seen my show then that probably means nothing to you so clearly it means you must come and watch it!)

What's going on?

I wrote this 75 minutes to amplify a narrative which speaks toward an emerging shift away from Psychiatry and medicalising our pain, which has been shaped by capitalist, colonialist and euro-centric norms about how a ‘normal’ person looks, feels and behaves.

Reducing an individual’s thoughts, behaviour and adverse responses to their environment to a ‘disorder of personality' fails to recognise the delicacy of subjective experience by censoring it with language, label and category.

Not only does this feel hypocritical given the disordered nature of the society upon which Psychiatry is built to treat. But maybe diagnoses run the risk of breeding further disorder when prescribing them to individuals who do not have a normative sense of self - we become our labels instead of understanding we are not all that we are reduced to and assigned from top down.

“It is incredibly rare for individuals with a 'mental illness' to be recognised as people whose expression of behaviour stem logically and tragically from the unsafe environments of their early lives.”

What’s your money going towards?

Our project looked at touring That’s Not My Name around the UK followed by post-show discussions called ‘Deconstructing Disorder’ led by lived experience collaborators, willing partners, artists and myself to start a necessary and unique way of shifting yet another power structure.

The aim is to then bundle all of these contributions, discussions and outpouring of empathy to throw back at the current clinical landscape and argue for a long overdue change in the way things are done and people are disordered.

We will be applying for another grant, but we can no longer rely on ticket sales or the unpredictable outcome of said grant alone. So anything, no matter how big or small is met with the biggest thanks from all of the team at TNMN.

I would like to take a second to thank Jake, Alexis, Scott and Matt who have to put up with this show and me. They are incredible human beings and have worked their backsides off to get us to where we are.

Thanks so much guys!

S x